It turned out that losing my mind and then getting it back was a motivator. I’d been pumped to do some damage even before Leticia started yanking my chain. When the game started up again, I was even more focused than before.
Although I didn’t hate her the way I did Wotan and Gimble. Maybe that was her gift working. If you liked girls, you couldn’t really hate her no matter how you tried. But I sure did want to knock her out of the game.
I didn’t. Nobody else went out that night. But, not long after the grandfather clock struck four, I flopped the nut straight, made the kind of big bet you often make when you don’t want a call, and got one from Gimble. He figured I was bluffing, which was what I wanted him to think. He had brains enough to fold when I put him all in on Fifth Street, but the hand still left him short-stacked. So that was progress, anyway.
When the session ended, I stood up, stretched, and looked for A’marie. She still wasn’t in the room. Then Timon grabbed me for some Monday morning quarterbacking. He mainly wanted to yell at me about how stupid it had been to risk his fief over a servant until I filled him in on what had really been going on.
When he finished with me, I went looking for A’marie. I couldn’t find her, and it wasn’t long before I started to drag. I wasn’t as tired as last night-or, technically, yesterday morning-but tired enough to convince me to pack it in.
Once again, I woke to see A’marie standing over me. This time, she had her clothes on, but she still looked cute.
“Hi.” I covered a yawn. “Are you supposed to just come in here whenever you feel like it?”
“I can start knocking if you want.”
“No, it’s okay. I was just thinking that if you want to get rid of Timon, and you guys all have passkeys… ”
“Lord Timon doesn’t sleep in the hotel or anyplace else where we can reach him. And even if he did, we probably couldn’t kill him.” Her silvery eyes narrowed. “Are you really going to punish me?”
Just then, I smelled bacon, and my mouth watered. I wasn’t starving like yesterday, but I was hungry. “Did you bring breakfast?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll let you off with a warning.” I threw off the covers, revealing the shiny green silk pajamas I’d found in the dresser. I thought I looked stupid in them, but even if A’marie thought so, too, she managed not to giggle.
Like before, there was a ton of food, I invited her to share, and she said again that she wasn’t supposed to. The show of reluctance might have been more convincing if I hadn’t noticed the second set of silverware on the cart.
Everything was good. I enjoyed it until, for some reason, I suddenly remembered Wotan stuffing raw meat into his mouth. Then I set my fork on my plate with a bite of ham still stuck on it, wiped my lips, and pushed back from the table.
“Have you had enough?” asked A’marie.
“I guess so. Except for another cup of coffee.”
“I’ll get it.”
As she poured, I wondered what to say next. I decided to go with the obvious.
“Thank you,” I said. “And I don’t just mean for bringing this. Thanks for helping me during the game.”
She swallowed a last bite of guava-and-cheese turnover. “You’re welcome.”
I hesitated, and she sucked the sugary stickiness off her fingertips. “I just don’t understand why you helped me,” I said at last. “I thought you and your buddies want me to lose.”
“Lose,” she said. “Not die or go crazy. And I was afraid that was what was happening.”
“So was I. But are your friends mad at you for what you did?”
Now it was her turn to hesitate. “Kind of.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They’ll understand after they’ve had a chance to think it over.” She frowned. “We’re not all monsters. Although I couldn’t blame you for thinking we are, when you mostly spend your time with Timon and the other lords.”
“I don’t think that,” I told her. “You know, I looked for you last night, but you’d disappeared.”
“I had to leave the room to burn the handkerchief, so no one could use it against you anymore. And then I figured it would be safer to stay away from Leticia for a while.”
I sipped my coffee. “That was probably smart.”
“If you really do feel grateful,” she said, “will you do me a favor?”
“Sure,” I said, feeling cautious, and not liking myself because of it. “If I can.”
“You can,” she said. “I just want you to meet some people. They’re already here in the hotel.”
She waited while I brushed my teeth, shaved, showered, and pulled on a clean knit shirt and khakis. Then she picked up a candle in a silver holder and led me to a set of service stairs.
It was black in the stairwell, and almost as creepy when we reached the ground floor, even though there were a couple hurricane lamps burning. A spider web blocked the top half of a doorway, and the bride and groom figures from a wedding cake lay on a little round table. An upright piano on casters stood against a wall. The dust in the stale air tickled my nose and tried to make me sneeze, and roach droppings crunched under my feet.
“We don’t use this part,” said A’marie. “The kitchen and laundry are over that way.” She waved her hand to show which direction she meant. “So I was pretty sure that if I hid people here, Timon wasn’t likely to come across them.”
That little comment didn’t make me feel any happier about what was happening. But I kept following her anyway, even after I heard the panting and grunting.
The noises came from one of the scaly little finheads. Except that he almost wasn’t scaly anymore. He had too many scars crisscrossing his body, and the crest leaned to the side and had holes in it, like Swiss cheese. He was grunting and gasping as he strained to break the nylon zip restraints that held his hands behind his back and his ankles together. When he spotted A’marie and me in the doorway, he tried to scream instead, but the leather gag muffled the sound.
He lay on the floor on the floor of a storage room with empty shelves, give or take a few old cans of peaches and fruit cocktail. A finhead female and two finhead boys stood around him. His family, I suspected. They were scarred up, too, though not as much. The female had a broken nose and was missing the top of her left ear. The smaller kid had lost the tips of two fingers, and had an oval made of tooth marks on his forearm.
“Thank you,” A’marie said. “I know how hard it is to move him. And that you ran a risk sneaking him in.”
The finhead woman shrugged. “You said it would help.” She scowled at me. “Is it?”
“Is this your husband?” I asked. “What happened to him?” Although I had a hunch I already knew.
Sure enough, she said, “Lord Timon.” She clenched her fist and slashed it back and forth. I’d never seen that particular gesture before, but I was pretty sure it meant she wanted the boss to burn in Hell.
“Why?” I asked.
“My cousin Francisco is a river master in Cuba,” she said. “He wanted to take Ezequiel, my firstborn, to be his apprentice. It was a wonderful opportunity. But Rufino was indentured. He had to beg permission for Ezequiel to leave.”
I assumed that Rufino was the guy squirming on the floor, and that indentured meant almost-a-thrall, maybe almost-a-thrall-till-you-made-good-on-a-debt. “And Timon didn’t appreciate being asked?”
“I was there, Mr. Billy! Rufino was as respectful as anyone could be. He offered to give another year of service. There was no reason for any master to take offense, unless he was just looking for excuses to be cruel!”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Nothing then. Timon was… nice. He said he’d think about it. But then, the next night, Rufino woke up screaming. Naturally, that woke me up, and I asked him what was wrong. He whipped around, saw me, and attacked me. If the boys hadn’t come running, I think he would have killed me.” He face twisted, and she hid it in her hands.
So Ezequiel, who was wearing a baggy orange-and-white Bucs jersey, took up the story. “Dad’s been this way ever since.” His voice cracked. The finheads weren’t exactly human, but apparently they had to suffer through puberty just like we do. “He wants to hurt everybody, but especially us, and even tying him up doesn’t always help. He still finds ways to hurt himself, to make us come in close to stop him. And then he can get at us.”